N. decrease, diminution, lessening, subtraction, reduction, abatement, declension, shrinking, coarctation|, abridgment, extenuation, subsidence, wane, ebb, decline, ebbing, descent, decrement, reflux, depreciation, deterioration, anticlimax, mitigation

V. decrease, diminish, lessen, abridge, shrink, drop off, fall off, tail off, fall away, waste, wear, wane, ebb, decline, descend, subside, melt away, die away, retire into the shade, hide its diminished head, fall to a low ebb, run low, languish, decay, crumble, bate, abate, dequantitate|, discount, depreciate, extenuate, lower, weaken, attenuate, fritter away, mitigate, dwarf, throw into the shade, reduce, shorten, subtract

Adj. unincreased &c. (see increase ), decreased, decreasing, on the wane

Phr. "a gilded halo hovering round decay", "fine by degrees and beautifully less", 3, conjunctive quantity

N. oldness, age, antiquity, cobwebs of antiquity, maturity, decline, decay, senility, seniority, eldership, primogeniture, archaism, thing of the past, relic of the past, megatherium, sanskrit, tradition, prescription, custom, immemorial usage, common law

V. be old, have had its day, have seen its day, become old, age, fade, senesce

Adj. old, ancient, antique, of long standing, time-honored, venerable, elder, eldest, firstborn, prime, primitive, primeval, primigenous, paleolontological, paleontologic, paleoanthropological, paleoanthropic, paleolithic, primordial, primordinate, aboriginal, diluvian, antediluvian, protohistoric, prehistoric, antebellum, colonial, precolumbian, patriarchal, preadamite, paleocrystic, fossil, paleozoolical, paleozoic, preglacial, antemundane, archaic, classic, medieval, pre-raphaelite, ancestral, black-letter, immemorial, traditional, prescriptive, customary, whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, inveterate, rooted, antiquated, of other times, rococo, of the old school, after-age, obsolete, out of date, out of fashion, out of it, stale, old-fashioned, behind the age, old-world, exploded, gone out, gone by, passe, run out, senile, time worn, crumbling, secondhand, old as the hills, old as methuselah, old as adam, old as history, archeozoic, proterozoic, paleozoic, mesozoic, cenozoic, precambrian, cambrian, ordovician, silurian, devonian, mississippian, pennsylvanian, permian, triassic, jurassic, cretaceous, tertiary, paleogene, neocene, quaternary, paleocene, eocene, oligocene, miocene, pliocene, pleistocene, recent

Adv. since the world was made, since the year one, since the days of methuselah

Phr. vetera extollimus recentium incuriosi

N. age, oldness, old age, advanced age, golden years, senility, senescence, years, anility, gray hairs, climacteric, grand climacteric, declining years, decrepitude, hoary age, caducity, superannuation, second childhood, second childishness, dotage, vale of years, decline of life, "sear and yellow leaf", threescore years and ten, green old age, ripe age, longevity, time of life, seniority, eldership, elders, firstling, doyen, father, primogeniture, geriatrics, nostology|

V. be aged, grow old, get old, age, decline, wane, dodder, senesce

Adj. aged, old, elderly, geriatric, senile, matronly, anile|, in years, ripe, mellow, run to seed, declining, waning, past one's prime, gray, gray-headed, hoar, hoary, venerable, time-worn, antiquated, passe, effete, decrepit, superannuated, advanced in life, advanced in years, stricken in years, wrinkled, marked with the crow's foot, having one foot in the grave, doting, like the last of pea time, older, elder, eldest, senior, firstborn, turned of, years old, of a certain age, no chicken, old as methuselah, ancestral, patriarchal, &c. (ancient) 124, gerontic

Phr. "give me a staff of honor for my age", bis pueri senes, peu de gens savent elre vieux, plenus annis abiit plenus honoribus, "old age is creeping on apace", "slow-consuming age", "the hoary head is a crown of glory", "the silver livery of advised age", to grow old gracefully, "to vanish in the chinks that time has made"

N. weakness, debility, atony, relaxation, languor, enervation, impotence, infirmity, effeminacy, feminality, fragility, flaccidity, inactivity, anaemia, bloodlessness, deficiency of blood, poverty of blood, declension of strength, loss of strength, failure of strength, delicacy, invalidation, decrepitude, asthenia, adynamy, cachexy, cachexia, sprain, strain, reed, thread, rope of sand, house of cards, softling, weakling, infant, youth

V. be weak, drop, crumble, give way, totter, tremble, shake, halt, limp, fade, languish, decline, flag, fail, have one leg in the grave, render weak, weaken, enfeeble, debilitate, shake, deprive of strength, relax, enervate, eviscerate, unbrace, unnerve, cripple, unman, cramp, reduce, sprain, strain, blunt the edge of, dilute, impoverish, decimate, extenuate, reduce in strength, reduce the strength of, mettre de l'eau dans son vin

Adj. weak, feeble, debile|, impotent, relaxed, unnerved, &c. v, sapless, strengthless, powerless, weakly, unstrung, flaccid, adynamic, asthenic, nervous, soft, effeminate, feminate, womanly, frail, fragile, shattery, flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, gimcrack, gingerbread, rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky, craichy, drooping, tottering, broken, lame, withered, shattered, shaken, crazy, shaky, palsied, decrepit, languid, poor, infirm, faint, faintish, sickly, dull, slack, evanid|, spent, short-winded, effete, weather-beaten, decayed, rotten, worn, seedy, languishing, wasted, washy, laid low, pulled down, the worse for wear, unstrengthened, unsupported, unaided, unassisted, aidless, defenseless, cantilevered (support) 215, on its last legs, weak as a child, weak as a baby, weak as a chicken, weak as a cat, weak as a rat, weak as water, weak as water gruel, weak as gingerbread, weak as milk and water, colorless

Phr. non sum qualis eram, 3, power in operation

N. descent, descension, # declension, declination, fall, falling, slump, drop, plunge, plummet, cadence, subsidence, collapse, lapse, downfall, tumble, slip, tilt, trip, lurch, cropper, culbute, titubation, stumble, fate of icarus, avalanche, debacle, landslip, landslide, declivity, dip, hill, rappel

V. descend, go down, drop down, come down, fall, gravitate, drop, slip, slide, rappel, settle, plunge, plummet, crash, decline, set, sink, droop, come down a peg, slump, dismount, alight, light, get down, swoop, stoop, fall prostrate, precipitate oneself, let fall, tumble, trip, stumble, titubate, lurch, pitch, swag, topple, topple over, tumble over, topple down, tumble down, tilt, sprawl, plump down, come down a cropper

Adj. descending, descendent, decurrent, decursive, labent, deciduous, nodding to its fall

Adv. downhill, downwards

Phr. the bottom fell out

N. rejection, repudiation, exclusion, refusal, declination v, reject, set aside, lay aside, give up, decline, exclude, except, pluck, spin, cast, repudiate, scout, set at naught, fling to the winds, fling to the dogs, fling overboard, fling away, cast to the winds, cast to the dogs, cast overboard, cast away, throw to the winds, throw to the dogs, throw overboard, throw away, toss to the winds, toss to the dogs, toss overboard, toss away, send to the right about, disclaim, discard, (have done with) 678

Adj. rejected, reject, rejectaneous|, rejectious|, not chosen, to be thought of, out of the question

Adv. neither, neither the one nor the other, no

Phr. non haec in faedera

N. disease, illness, sickness, ailing &c. "all the ills that flesh is heir to", morbidity, morbosity|, infirmity, ailment, indisposition, complaint, disorder, malady, distemper, distemperature, visitation, attack, seizure, stroke, fit, delicacy, loss of health, invalidation, cachexy, cachexia, atrophy, marasmus, indigestion, dyspepsia, decay, decline, consumption, palsy, paralysis, prostration, taint, pollution, infection, sepsis, septicity, infestation, epidemic, pandemic, endemic, epizootic, murrain, plague, pestilence, pox, sore, ulcer, abscess, fester, boil, pimple, wen, carbuncle, gathering, imposthume, peccant humor, issue, rot, canker, cold sore, fever sore, cancer, carcinoma, leukemia, neoplastic disease, malignancy, tumor, caries, mortification, corruption, gangrene, sphacelus, sphacelation, leprosy, eruption, rash, breaking out, fever, temperature, calenture, inflammation, ague, angina pectoris, appendicitis, asiatic cholera, spasmodic cholera, biliary calculus, kidney stone, black death, bubonic plague, pneumonic plague, blennorrhagia, blennorrhoea, blood poisoning, bloodstroke, bloody flux, brash, breakbone fever, dengue fever, malarial fever, q-fever, heart attack, cardiac arrest, cardiomyopathy, hardening of the arteries, arteriosclerosis, atherosclerosis, bronchocele, canker rash, cardialgia, carditis, endocarditis, cholera, asphyxia, chlorosis, chorea, cynanche, dartre, enanthem, enanthema, erysipelas, exanthem, exanthema, gallstone, goiter, gonorrhea, green sickness, grip, grippe, influenza, flu, hay fever, heartburn, heaves, rupture, hernia, hemorrhoids, piles, herpes, itch, king's evil, lockjaw, measles, mumps, polio, necrosis, pertussis, phthisis, pneumonia, psora, pyaemia, pyrosis, quinsy, rachitis, ringworm, rubeola, st. vitus's dance, scabies, scarlatina, scarlet fever, scrofula, seasickness, struma, syntexis, tetanus, tetter, tonsillitis, tonsilitis, tracheocele, trachoma, trismus, varicella, varicosis, variola, water qualm, whooping cough, yellow fever, yellow jack, fatal disease, dangerous illness, galloping consumption, churchyard cough, general breaking up, break up of the system, idiocy, insanity, martyr to disease, cripple, "the halt the lame and the blind", valetudinary, valetudinarian, invalid, patient, case, sickroom, sick- chamber, pathology, etiology, nosology, anthrax, bighead, blackleg, blackquarter, cattle plague, glanders, mange, scrapie, milk sickness, heartworm, feline leukemia, roundworms, quarter-evil, quarter-ill, rinderpest, virus, bacterium, bacteria, dna virus, rna virus, rhinovirus, rhabdovirus, picornavirus, herpesvirus, cytomegalovirus, cmv, human immunodefficiency virus, hiv

V. be ill, ail, suffer, labor under, be affected with, complain of, have, droop, flag, languish, halt, sicken, peak, pine, gasp, keep one's bed, feign sickness, lay by, lay up, take a disease, catch a disease, catch an infection, break out

Adj. diseased, ailing, ill, ill of, taken ill, seized with, indisposed, unwell, sick, squeamish, poorly, seedy, affected with illness, afflicted with illness, laid up, confined, bedridden, invalided, in hospital, on the sick list, out of health, out of sorts, under the weather, valetudinary, unsound, unhealthy, sickly, morbid, morbose, healthless, infirm, chlorotic, unbraced, drooping, flagging, lame, crippled, halting, morbid, tainted, vitiated, peccant, contaminated, poisoned, tabid, mangy, leprous, cankered, rotten, rotten to the core, rotten at the core, withered, palsied, paralytic, dyspeptic, luetic, pneumonic, pulmonic, phthisic, rachitic, syntectic, syntectical, tabetic, varicose, touched in the wind, broken-winded, spavined, gasping, hors de combat, weakly, weakened, decrepit, decayed, incurable, in declining health, cranky, in a bad way, in danger, prostrate, moribund, morbific, epidemic, endemic, zymotic

N. deterioration, debasement, wane, ebb, recession, retrogradation, decrease, degeneracy, degeneration, degenerateness, degradation, depravation, depravement, devolution, depravity, demoralization, retrogression, masochism, impairment, inquination|, injury, damage, loss, detriment, delaceration|, outrage, havoc, inroad, ravage, scath, perversion, prostitution, vitiation, discoloration, oxidation, pollution, defoedation|, poisoning, venenation|, leaven, contamination, canker, corruption, adulteration, alloy, decline, declension, declination, decadence, decadency, falling off, caducity, decrepitude, decay, dilapidation, ravages of time, wear and tear, corrosion, erosion, moldiness, rottenness, moth and rust, dry rot, blight, marasmus, atrophy, collapse, disorganization, delabrement &c. (destruction), 162, aphid, aphis, plant louse, puceron, vinefretter, vinegrub, wreck, mere wreck, honeycomb, magni nominis umbra, jade, plug, rackabones, skate, tackey, tacky

V. be worse, be deteriorated, become worse, become deteriorated, have seen better days, deteriorate, degenerate, fall off, wane, ebb, retrograde - decline, droop, go down, go downhill, go from bad to worse, go farther and fare worse, jump out of the frying pan into the fire, run to seed, go to seed, run to waste swale|, sweal|, lapse, be the worse for, sphacelate, break, break down, spring a leak, crack, start, shrivel, fade, go off, wither, molder, rot, rankle, decay, go bad, go to decay, fall into decay, "fall into the sear and yellow leaf", rust, crumble, shake, totter, totter to its fall, perish, die, deteriorate, weaken, put back, set back, taint, infect, contaminate, poison, empoison, envenom, canker, corrupt, exulcerate|, pollute, vitiate, inquinate|, debase, embase|, denaturalize, denature, leaven, deflower, debauch, defile, deprave, degrade, ulcerate, stain, discolor, alloy, adulterate, sophisticate, tamper with, prejudice, pervert, prostitute, demoralize, brutalize, render vicious, embitter, acerbate, exacerbate, aggravate, injure, impair, labefy, damage, harm, hurt, shend|, scath|, scathe, spoil, mar, despoil, dilapidate, waste, overrun, ravage, pillage, wound, stab, pierce, maim, lame, surbate|, cripple, hough, hamstring, hit between wind and water, scotch, mangle, mutilate, disfigure, blemish, deface, warp, blight, rot, corrode, erode, wear away, wear out, gnaw, gnaw at the root of, sap, mine, undermine, shake, sap the foundations of, break up, disorganize, dismantle, dismast, destroy, damnify, do one's worst, knock down, deal a blow to, play havoc with, play sad havoc with, play the mischief with, play the deuce with, play the very devil with, play havoc among, play sad havoc among, play the mischief among, play the deuce among, play the very devil among, decimate

Adj. unimproved &c. (improve ), deteriorated, altered, altered for the worse, injured, sprung, withering, spoiling, on the wane, on the decline, tabid, degenerate, marescent, worse, the worse for, all the worse for, out of repair, out of tune, imperfect, the worse for wear, battered, weathered, weather-beaten, stale, passe, shaken, dilapidated, frayed, faded, wilted, shabby, secondhand, threadbare, worn, worn to a thread, worn to a shadow, worn to the stump, worn to rags, reduced, reduced to a skeleton, far gone, tacky, decayed, moth-eaten, worm-eaten, mildewed, rusty, moldy, spotted, seedy, time-worn, moss-grown, discolored, effete, wasted, crumbling, moldering, rotten, cankered, blighted, tainted, depraved, decrepid, decrepit, broke, busted, broken, out of commission, hors de combat, out of action, broken down, done, done for, done up, worn out, used up, finished, beyond saving, fit for the dust hole, fit for the wastepaper basket, past work, at a low ebb, in a bad way, on one's last legs, undermined, deciduous, nodding to its fall, tottering &c, (dangerous) 665: past cure, fatigued, retrograde, deleterious

Phr. out of the frying pan into the fire, agrescit medendo, "what a falling off was there!"

N. adversity, evil, failure, bad luck, ill luck, evil luck, adverse luck, hard fortune, hard hap, hard luck, hard lot, frowns of fortune, evil dispensation, evil star, evil genius|, vicissitudes of life, ups and downs of life, broken fortunes, hard case, hard lines, hard life, sea of troubles, peck of troubles, hell upon earth, slough of despond, trouble, hardship, curse, blight, blast, load, pressure, pressure of the times, iron age, evil day, time out of joint, hard times, bad times, sad times, rainy day, cloud, dark cloud, gathering clouds, ill wind, visitation, infliction, affliction, bitter pill, care, trial, the sport of fortune, mishap, mischance, misadventure, misfortune, disaster, calamity, catastrophe, accident, casualty, cross, reverse, check, contretemps, rub, backset, comedown, setback, losing game, falling, fall, downfall, ruination, ruinousness, undoing, extremity, ruin

V. be ill off, go hard with, fall on evil, fall on evil days, go on ill, not prosper, go downhill, go to rack and ruin, go to the dogs, fall, fall from one's high estate, decay, sink, decline, go down in the world, have seen better days, bring down one's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave, come to grief, be all over, be up with, bring a wasp's nest about one's ears, bring a hornet's nest about one's ears

Adj. unfortunate, unblest, unhappy, unlucky, improsperous, unprosperous, hoodooed, luckless, hapless, out of luck, in trouble, in a bad way, in an evil plight, under a cloud, clouded, ill off, badly off, in adverse circumstances, poor, behindhand, down in the world, decayed, undone, on the road to ruin, on its last legs, on the wane, in one's utmost need, planet-struck, devoted, born under an evil star, born with a wooden ladle in one's mouth, ill-fated, ill-starred, ill-omened, adverse, untoward, disastrous, calamitous, ruinous, dire, deplorable

N. refusal, rejection, noncompliance, incompliance, denial, declining, declension, declinature, peremptory refusal, flat refusal, point blank refusal, repulse, rebuff, discountenance, recusancy, abnegation, protest, disclaimer, dissent, revocation

V. refuse, reject, deny, decline, turn down, nill, negative, refuse one's assent, withhold one's assent, shake the head, close the hand, close the purse, grudge, begrudge, be slow to, hang fire, pass, be deaf to, dismiss, turn a deaf ear to, turn one's back upon, set one's face against, discountenance, not hear of, have nothing to do with, wash one's hands of, stand aloof, forswear, set aside, cast behind one, not yield an inch, resist, cross, not grant, repel, repulse, shut the door in one's face, slam the door in one's face, rebuff, send back, send to the right about, send away with a flea in the ear, deny oneself, not be at home to, discard, spurn, &c. (repudiate) 610, rescind, disclaim, protest, dissent

Adj. refusing, restive, restiff|, recusant, uncomplying, unconsenting, not willing to hear of, deaf to, refused, ungranted, out of the question, not to be thought of, impossible

Adv. no, on no account, not for the world, no thank you, thanks but no thanks

Phr. non possumus, your humble servant, bien oblige, not on your life, no way, not even if you beg on your knees